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Windows 7: what do software developers benefit ?

Many also get income by means of posting advertising, either in their websites or in the program directly. MSN for example is flooded with ads and many downloads sites and home pages are too.
Some companies also choose to give free software, but charge for support. Some variations of Linux for enterprises for instance. Linux itself is open source, therefore, free, but you must pay if you want support or any custom modifications for it.
Programs licensed as "free for personal use" but not free for corporate usage act as a sort of advertising for its own product, as also do the some limited free versions of paid software.
And of course, you always have softwares that are developed without intention of earning money, simply for making something useful and giving it away for free, most times with developers voluntarily giving their spare time for the project.

i got the last part .
i through that there must be a profit but it seems that some people develop and let people use freely .
and i got the idea of Ads .... though i don't pay but they profit .

ok Realplayer and all windows-related softwares are pre-paid by us ... is the money we pay at the time of first installation till after say a year or 2 years- or maybe more because people may keep their systems well and away from all viruses- .. is that 'tiny amount ' with respect to the period i use my system say years .. is that amount a profit or considered a profit ? isnt it too little ?

I see your point but they must be doing something right to have over $6bn in profit. MS makes the majority of their money from OEM licenses who are rumoured to pay MS $50/license, which will add up very quickly!

Quote:

secondly , i want to know where that profit of facebook and others come from .... personally they dont take sth from me .

Ads, ads and more ads! Ever seen things like this on Facebook:

Companies pay Facebook to display their ads directly to their target market - for example if they were promoting student insurance then they could pay Facebook to display ads to people aged 17-25. Do you see what I mean? There's a few other things:

I recently bought an iPhone 5 and have spoken to people about it in chat, and I have also used it to connect to Facebook. That's probably why I'm getting an iPhone case ad at the side!

Edit: Looking at the other ads, they're also tailored towards me. I'm a student, I stayed in a Travelodge about 3 weeks ago and I own an iPhone.

Quote: Originally Posted by techno di

Quote: Originally Posted by Britton30

While many software has no monetary payment, you and people who use it pay for it by giving your personal info which is sold for money. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc all do this. some downloads come with bundled software you may not know about which tracks you browsing, where you buy online, who you email contacts are etc. So in that sense, they are "free" at all.

There are some which I think are free such as CCleaner or AS SSD and other benchmark software. When you buy a program they have all of your personal info to complete the transaction.

i want to understand the highlighted part ... could you explain me ?
thanks for your cooperation

I couldn't suffer through the whole thread, I'm sorry, so just giving my untainted take:

Over the years I have tried a ton of 'freeware'.

The profit model for some freeware is all the PAID to bundle stuff they put in with the install, be it some toolbar or offer of a virus scan, I've seen some with 4+ offers during the install.

Some will have various PAID ads on their homepage that could be anything.

Some freeware surely has some running ads while you use their product or can even just be as simple as something in a splash screen.

They could be using it to get you to try their other PAID products or have an ad somewhere or a timed ad or a later downloaded ad, if you allow their code to get to the internets.

My favorite way is WinPatrol's, great product so I don't mind kicking the 1 man development team some scratch any way, but you pay and you get access to his search database, gotten to, from within WinPatrol and only enabled by his code, and that is the ONLY added feature you get, but a very good one, great program if you don't have it, you probably should.

In WinPatrol's case, he probably has been paid $24.95 somewhere north of 100,000 times, and wouldn't surprise me if it was way over 1 million, do the math!

Donate-ware is a fair model too, just donate if you can afford to and find it useful, just becomes a #'s game, whether that method works and they can stay afloat or not.

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